In my last blog post, I shared my 6 tips for better phone photography. So, today I’m going to share a bit about how I edit phone photos directly in Instagram. With the capabilities of today’s smartphones, you can capture beautiful photos quickly and easily without lugging around a bulky camera. It took me some time to figure out, but for the most part I stick to one shooting and editing routine with my phone.
I have the iPhone6 Plus and I tend to shoot with my phone’s camera or with the camera in my Filmborn app. My phone camera gives me a nice evenly lit cell phone photo, and it’s very quick and easy to access from my locked phone screen. However, the camera in my Filmborn app works amazingly well when I have very little light to work with; or at times when I want the look and feel of a film camera. It takes an extra step to find and open the app on my home screen before shooting, but the photos I get are almost perfect before taking it into Instagram to edit!
So let’s talk about how quickly and easily I edit my phone photos in Instagram. If you read through last week’s post, then you know shooting in the best available natural light is paramount in taking a good photo with your phone. For an example, take a look at my before and after photo below. The image on the left was taken in a shady area of an outdoor back-patio, so the light is nice and even in the photo. You don’t see any harsh sun spots or unflattering shadows in the image. It’s a nice snap of our tablescape, but we could take it up a few notches with a bit more editing. The after photo on the right took 9 quick steps right inside of the Instagram app.
These screenshots of my cell phone, will take you step by step through the process I use to edit my photos in Instagram. These are the exact steps I take to polish up my cell phone grabs into Instagram-worthy shots.
ADJUST
When I look at the before image, my eye doesn’t immediately focus on the pretty candle decorations in this tablescape, so my first step is to use the rule of thirds to help crop my photo to draw the eye into where I want it to focus in this shot.
To crop the image, you tap on the screen and pinch the photo to zoom in further. Then, you can move the photo around in the frame and place it exactly where you want it. I choose to keep my vertical photos, right along one of the vertical lines in the grid. In this photo, I choose to place the image right along the line along the right side of my phone’s screen, because we read to left to right. And so to me it just flows better that way.
After cropping the photo, you could see that image wasn’t level. So, I tapped on the middle square to straighten the photo. The square on the left, will bring the front or the bottom of the photo towards/away you, and is pretty useful for when you shoot a flat lay from above and your phone was on an angle. This tool can fix the perspective for a perfectly flat photo. The square on the right, brings the left or the right sides of the photo towards/away from you. So if you were, leaning more to one sides, this is a great way to fix your camera angle after you’ve taken the photo.
BRIGHTNESS
Now that I’ve cropped the photo and leveled the table, I open up the “Brightness” feature and slide my finger to the right to brighten the image. In the original photo the light was nice and even, but I gravitate towards images that have lots of bright light in them. If your photo is very bright and you want to bring down the light in your photo, then simply slide your finger to the left to darken the photo.
SHADOWS
Now that I’ve brightened the photo, it’s starting to look a lot more like my photography style. But I’m ready to take my phone image a step further. I use the “Shadow” tool to lighten the dark shadows in the image, so it looks more like a natural light image I would take with my professional camera. Look a the shadows underneath the siding on the wall I used for my backdrop. Then compare them to the photo on the right. The shadows are less harsh now. You can lighten the dark areas in your photo by sliding your finger to the right. If you love shadows and want to increase their darkness, slide your finger to the left.
HIGHLIGHTS
The “Highlight” feature is going to adjust the bright areas of your photos. You can probably tell by now, but I love love love bright images that are light and airy. So 99.9% of the time, I’m sliding my finger to the right to get more brightness into my photo. When you brighten the image, you tend to loose some of the detail in your photo. So if you look closely at the before and after photo, you will notice that the candles are a little washed out after my edit. And Im totally okay with them losing detail, because I’m not trying to make the candles themselves my focus. Just something to keep in mind, if you’re shooting something with tons of detail that you would like to show in your photo, be careful with the highlight sliders. And if you slide to far to the right? No worries, slide your finger to the left to darken the highlights and you’ll get it right where you want it!
CONTRAST
The “Contrast” feature enhances both the bright and dark areas of the photo. I love this feature because it gives the photo a little pop and makes the colors look a little richer. You’ll want to apply this slider moderately. If you go to far to the right and the image will have to much definition and look cartoonish. Too far to the left and your photo will look very flat.
SATURATION
So now that I’m okay with how the lighting in my image looks, my next step is to adjust the colors of my photo. Brightening the photos can make the image start to dull a little, and adding a little pop with the “Contrast” feature helped me out a lot. But my “Saturation” actually tool controls how intense the colors are within the photo. So in this situation, I would slide my finger to the right to make the green leaf a little greener.
WARMTH
The “Warmth” feature controls the tone of your photo. I like to think of the sun when I talk about warmth in my photos. I’m shooting outside during the day, then I want my photos to look a little sun kissed or a little on the warm side. If I’m shooting indoors, I want my images to look a little cooler. When you slide your finger to the right, the colors in your image shift towards more orange tones. When you slide your finger to the left, the colors in your photo shifts to a more blue tone. The tones in the brass elements of my photo are warm and I was shooting in mid-day with plenty of sun, so I added a smidgen of warmth to my photo.
STRUCTURE
After adding in more light and bumping up the colors in my cell phone photo, it’s time to add some definition to the photo with the “Structure” tool. This function is used to adds lots of detail to photos. You can take the slider all the way to the right if you would like to create lots of detail and have the HDR look to your photo. It’s not necessary for every photo, but I wouldn’t to avoid the photo looking to hazy on Instagram, so I add a tidbit of detail with this feature.
SHARPEN
I use the “Sharpen” feature to make my images nice and crisp for Instagram. Photos that are nice, clear and crisp look amazing when printed. Plus, a nice crisp photo gets great engagement on Instagram! And that’s it! That’s my final step in editing my phone photos for Instagram.
Here’s my Instagram photo editing recipe for a quick recap!
- ADJUST: Crop and straighten the image
- BRIGHTNESS: Brighten the image
- SHADOWS: Decrease the shadows (the dark areas in my image)
- HIGHLIGHTS: Increase the highlights (make the bright areas of my image brighter)
- CONTRAST: Make the photo pop by increasing both the dark and light areas of the image
- SATURATION: Increase the intensity of the colors in the image
- WARMTH: Increase the warm tones for outdoor images, & decrease warm tones for indoor images
- STRUCTURE: Bring out the details in the photo
- SHARPEN: Make the photos crisp and clear for posting to Instagram and printing
I hope you have fun experimenting with your photos on Instagram! You can follow my work on Instagram here and be sure to sign up for my newsletter to receive exclusive access to some of my top secret phone photography and editing tips. I’ll be sending out a new guide that launches next week and its 100% FREE!
